he met, and who received
him with the utmost cordiality. Intermingled with these narrative
details are outbursts of feeling, which are provoked by passing
political and ecclesiastical events, in which he took a profound
interest, though he never appears to have committed himself with
positive openness to the party of reform. His sympathies are, however,
clearly shown by his writings, as well as by his works of art, to have
been with the Reformers, and he lived on terms of intimacy with
Erasmus and Melancthon, of both of whom we have portraits from his
hand.

Duerer returned from the Netherlands in 1521, about the middle of July,
and the remaining years of his life were spent in the prosecution of
the art of the engraver, in painting, and in the effort to elucidate
the sciences of perspective, geometry, and fortification, upon all of
which he has left treatises.

His labors, though they had not brought with them great wealth, had
secured for him a competency, and the latter years of his life were
devoted more and more to labors which, while dignified, did not tend
to add greatly to his already magnificent reputation. These labors
were prosecuted in spite of ever-failing health. While in the
Netherlands he had contracted a malarial fever, the effects of which
clung to him, in spite of the best treatment which could be secured,
and left him the wreck of his former self. On April 6, 1528, death
suddenly overtook him. There was not even time to summon his friends
to his side before his spirit had fled. The city which had been his
home from childhood was filled with mourning. They took up his remains
and gently laid them to rest in the burial vault of his wife's family
in the graveyard of the Church of St. John, where the setting sun
pours its last glowing beams at evening over the low Franconian
hill-tops. The vault has since been changed and the last
resting-place of the remains of the Raphael of the North is a lowly
mound, reverently approached by all who visit the quaint imperial
city, upon which is a slab, covered with a bronze tablet upon which
are the words:

Quicquid Alberti Dureri Mortale
Fuit Sub Hoc Conditum Tumulo.
Emigravit VIII Idus Aprilis, MDXXVIIL

"_Emigravit_ is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies;
Dead he is not, but departed--for the artist never dies.
Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair,
That he once has trod its pavement, that he